New York (AP) — Clearwire Corp. says its shareholders have voted in favor of selling the rest of its shares to majority owner Sprint Nextel Corp.
Sprint offered $5 per share for the rest of Clearwire, which runs a mobile broadband network that Sprint uses to provide “Sprint 4G” service on many of its phones.
Sprint hopes the deal will make it more competitive with bigger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. It had to raise its original bid for Clearwire to overcome a competing bid from Dish Network.
Bellevue, Wash.-based Clearwire says about 82 percent of its shares that were not affiliated with Sprint were voted in favor of the sale. Sprint and Clearwire expect complete the transaction on Tuesday.
Sprint, in turn, has agreed to be acquired by Japan’s Softbank for $21.6 billion.